


talk to me

by enjolrolo



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Fist Fights, Lack of Communication, M/M, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 09:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10434897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolrolo/pseuds/enjolrolo
Summary: Spot could, in theory, take the guy on his own.He would prefer not to.





	

Spot tries to be subtle about his evasive maneuvers, which consist of him just going around the block once, but when he's done, he has the information he needs. Firstly, he's definitely being followed, and secondly, his pursuer knows that _Spot_ knows he's being followed.

Of course, Spot’s phone is dead. He has money enough for one call on a pay phone, but he doesn't want to stop moving. If it comes down to it, could definitely take whoever it is in a fight, but he's not on his own turf right now and he doesn't know if anyone would come along and help beat Spot into a pulp if the situation arises. He's already gotten into too many fights in Manhattan, the police officers who work around here are done cutting him any slack, and Spot would rather not deal with that at the moment. They know his face from the homeless shelter, no doubt.

So he keeps walking; not too slow, not too fast. He's looking for a phone booth, _please_ let there be a phone booth around here, he can hear the guy behind him gaining speed just a little. A phone booth would let Spot hide for a few minutes, at least, maybe?

Spot was stupid to stay so long talking to Race, especially on a fall night when it's cold and he needs to find somewhere to stay indoors. Despite the fact that Spot has a _reputation_ to uphold and things to do, he found himself staying for three rounds of cards too many, just because Race asked with that damn smile of his. Plus, Spot is pretty sure Race’s mom is the chillest mom on the planet, and she always agrees to him and Jack and some of the others staying just a little after curfew. She's an enabler, and Race is no better.

Racetrack Higgins is going to be the death of him, one of these days. Grinding his teeth together, Spot steps up his pace a notch.

He doesn't realize how nervous he is until he hears a sudden increase in the speed of the person behind him, like they're lunging to catch him, and he bolts forward. Spot _bolts_ , like a dumb kid trying and failing to look innocent.

And now it's too late for him to stop running, because his stalker is immediately on his heels, so he runs. He sprints as fast as he can to lose them, but they're fast too. Spot catches sight of a phone booth at the end of the block, and he charges towards it.

He feels the person swipe at his arm, almost catching hold of it, and he swallows a noise of fear. Spot pulls ahead long enough to throw himself into the phone booth and shut the door behind him, leaning against it with his entire body weight. The person throws themselves at the door, causing the entire booth to shake violently, but the plexiglass doesn't yield.

Spot’s cold fingers fumble with the coins in his pocket, and he drops a couple of nickels, swearing under his breath the whole time, but he manages to get all the change required into the slot, and dials as fast as he can as he catches his breath. As the phone rings, he looks over his shoulder, through the plastic, to see what his attacker even looks like. The guy’s tall and definitely in shape, but he can't be much older than Spot. Eighteen or nineteen, maybe.

Spot makes a face at him. The guy responds by running himself into the booth again, almost knocking Spot away from the door with the force of it. Okay, maybe Spot won't provoke him further.

The phone picks up, and Spot has never been so glad to hear Race’s dumb sleepy voice. “Hello?”

Spot’s still panting from his run, but he gets out a desperate, “Come get me.”

“Spot?”

“Yeah.” Spot definitely needs to do more cardio, his lungs feel constricted in a way that they shouldn't after a short sprint (He doesn't let himself consider it could be panic choking him up).  "Please.”

“What's going on?” Race asks, sounding a lot more awake and considerably less calm than he had before. “Talk to me--”

Spot’s attacker rams into the phone booth again, and Spot drops the receiver, stumbling enough to allow the phone booth door to start to open against his back. He manages to turn and get a solid hit on the guy’s face before his opponent can do the same, then snatches the phone back and says “I'm on Mercer and sixth, please hurry,” hangs up, and shoves past the guy to get out of the phone booth. No way is he getting trapped in there.

The guy has recovered by now, and latches onto Spot’s arm, wrenching it backwards. Spot yanks down, attempting to pull him off-balance, but the guy just spins with the movement and Spot finds himself thrown into the side of the brick storefront nearest them, all the air whooshing from his chest with the impact.

“What do you want?” Spot wheezes, trying to push the guy off of him.

His attacker opens his mouth to answer, but then his fist comes out of nowhere and catches Spot across the jaw first. He has a _mean_ right hook. “You’re on my turf, Conlon.”

Is Spot supposed to know who this guy is? He says, “Manhattan is Jack Kelly’s, asshole,” and then kicks him in the shins as hard as he can.

This gives him long enough to get away from where he had been pinned against the wall, but now he's got to finish the fight. Once it's been started, he can't just run away--he does have an image to uphold. He ducks into an alley, because the guy will follow him, and people driving by might not see them and call the police.

“You're pretty far from Kelly’s turf,” the guy growls, and he swings at Spot again. Spot ducks under it and throws a punch back, getting him upside the chin and getting his back away from the wall.

“Just passing through. Why's you so threatened by that?” Spot gets punched in the eye for that, but he rolls with it and gets close enough to get a hit on his opponent’s stomach, effectively putting him out of commission for a few seconds.

“Hutch!” A voice says, and it's not Race’s, which means three things: first, backup for this Hutch kid has just arrived; second, Race was probably caught sneaking out by his mother and isn't even coming; third, Spot is screwed.

There are two kids coming to join in the party on Hutch’s behalf, and Spot punches the first in the face hard enough that he goes right down, but receives another on the jaw for his troubles. Hutch is feeling emboldened by having friends now, because he shoves Spot away from him hard enough that Spot goes down.

Which is not where Spot wants to be, as he's realizing as he gets two, then three kicks to his ribs, two more to his stomach. He manages to roll over and staggers to his feet, decking the second new guy, and that leaves Hutch alone again, his two friends on the ground groaning.

“Why's you so _threatened_?” Spot asks again, suppressing a cough because all it will do is make his ribs hurt. There has to be more to this than Hutch getting antsy over a couple of blocks nobody else cares about.

Hutch lunges forward and tackles Spot instead of answering, and Spot finds himself on the ground again, gasping for air.

“We’re moving a little quickly, ain't we?” Spot doesn't sound confident like he should, and Hutch punches him one more time, hard enough that Spot’s head jerks to the left and he thinks he knows what seeing stars means.

“You tell your friend Racetrack about this, alright?” Hutch says in a low voice, and Spot understands now, through a haze of pain. Hutch has some dumb grudge against Race, and this is his dumb Manhattan way of dealing with it.

“Tell me yourself,” snarls Race’s voice, just before a fist appears and slams itself into Hutch’s head. Hutch goes sideways, and Race drags Spot out from under him and to his feet. “You stay the fuck away from him, Hutch," Race threatens, pushing Spot behind him. "He's not part of this and you don't want him to be."

Part of  _what_? Spot vaguely wishes Race and he talked like normal people, sometimes. They were never quite on the same page, drama-wise. Actually, they weren't even in the same chapter, most of the time. Spot isn't used to being the prize of war in any sort of fight, but his vision is swimming and he'd very much like to sit down--everything hurts. Now is not the time to show weakness, however, so he glares as if he could go another three rounds instead.

Hutch is back on his feet by now, and is squaring up to Race. He's shorter than Race by just about an inch, so he isn't quite as intimidating as he could be when he says, “Yeah, like I'm gonna listen to _you_.”

“You want the rest of Manhattan and Brooklyn after your hide, go ahead,” Race challenges, setting his jaw and staring Hutch down. “Put one more finger on any of my friends and you're good as dead.”

“You don't have that much power, Higgins.” Hutch’s gaze goes from Race to Spot and back again, like he's trying to gauge how much he can get away with saying. “You're just lucky Kelly likes you, or you'd be nothing.”

“And you’se just lucky Nooks can read things for you, or you'd be working the street corner again,” Race shoots back. “Soon as you pay up I'll step off, you're not gonna get out of it by acting like a damn coward.”

Hutch stands his ground for a couple more tense seconds, but then one of his friends, just having recovered from Spot, says, “We need to get going,” and Hutch breaks eye contact with Race.

“Watch your back, Conlon,” he mutters as he goes to leave. As he passes, he knocks shoulders with Race, who coolly ignores it and instead turns to Spot, looking him over.

“We need to get you cleaned up.” Which is an understatement. Spot’s left eye is so swollen at this point that he can hardly see out of it, and the knuckles on both of his hands are split open and bleeding.

Despite this, neither of them move until they're sure Hutch and his gang are gone, at which point Spot lets himself relax and asks, “What did you do to him?”

Race looks Spot over, and he looks so guilty that Spot almost doesn't want to press him further.

Then again, Spot deserves an explanation. “Does he owe you money?”

“He's a shit poker player, I won four hundred off of him and he wouldn’t pay up, so I had to do something.”

“What kind of _something_ \--”

Race takes Spot’s arm and pulls him down the street, back towards Race’s house. “It was enough for him to decide to hold a grudge, okay? I'm sorry you got caught in the middle of it, I never wanted you to, I don't know how he found out.”

Spot lets himself be dragged along, but that doesn't mean he's giving up. “Race, how many people did you tell about us?”

Race stops, suddenly enough that Spot runs into his back and bounces off, groaning.

“Geez, Race--”

“Shut up, Conlon.” Race turns and jabs a finger into Spot’s chest. “You know I didn't tell anyone except Jack and Davey and Mush.”

“One of them must’ve snitched, then.” Spot knows none of them did, but he just got beat up because Race didn't warn him something was going on, and he has a right to be mad. “How _else_ would they have found out?”

“What, like you didn't--who did _you_ tell?”

“No one! I didn't tell anyone.” It's not that he doesn't trust his boys, but Spot doesn't trust any of them enough for something like this.

Race narrows his eyes, as if he doesn't believe him, but doesn't say anything more. He just starts moving again, yanking Spot down the sidewalk.

“Race, you know I don’t have nobody to tell.” The events of the evening have all been a bit much, and Spot is almost stumbling over his feet trying to keep up.

“Yeah. I know,” Race mutters, defeated, and thankfully slows down. “They must'a seen us somewhere, we gotta be more careful.”

“Well, if they already know, we got nothing to lose.”

At that, Race stops and turns his head to look at him again, a faint grin on his face. “I'd take you up on that offer, but you look like hell.”

“Doesn't mean I can't do this,” Spot says, and he leans forward and plants a kiss on Race’s lips.

Despite the fact that he's still kind of aching all over and he feels mildly concussed, kissing Race feels safe and good in a way Spot would never, ever admit. He can tell Race is enjoying it, but then Race’s lips press the wrong way on Spot's split lip and both jerk back in surprise.

“Ew, you're bleeding.” Race wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and then spits for good measure. He then fends off Spot trying to kiss him again with a firm hand on Spot’s shoulder. “I'm not letting you give me some blood-transmitted disease, Spot.”

“You weren't complaining before,” Spot grumbles, but accepts that the moment is over and lets Race finish pulling him towards home.

Race’s sister meets them at the front door with the first aid kit, pressing the bag into Race’s arms and then a finger to her lips. “I distracted Mom, but you've gotta be careful,” Emilia says.

“ _Bless_ ,” Race says emphatically.

“Yikes, Spot,” she comments, taking in his many injuries. “Quite a look.”

“I woke up like this,” Spot says.

Race rolls his eyes at both of them, thanks his sister again, and then leads Spot up the stairs to his room.

Spot collapses onto the bed as soon as Race has the door closed, and he's already mostly asleep by the time Race sits next to him, saying “No, come on, let's clean you up.”

Groaning, Spot just rolls over onto his back. “Tomorrow?”

“I'm not explaining any blood on these sheets to my mother again,” Race says with terrifying finality, “and there's an ice pack in here for your eye.” Spot pokes at said eye, and Race smacks his hand. “Please let me take care of you, this is all my fault.”

Looking at Race’s distraught face is enough to convince Spot to sit up and cooperate--Spot never wants Race to look like that if he can do anything about it.

After fifteen minutes of band-aids and antibacterial swabs, Race is satisfied with taking care of Spot as much as he can, and he starts packing up the first aid kit. Spot keeps the ice pack on his eye, but watches Race with his open one.

He can tell Race is still upset about what happened. To be honest, Spot is already over it--he's been in worse fights and if anyone’s getting beat up, it's better him than Race anyway. It's his ribs that are going to be a problem for a couple of days, and Race doesn't know about those yet, so Spot can focus on making Race feel better.

So when Race turns back to him, Spot pulls him into a hug. He tucks his face into Race’s shoulder and holds on so Race can't escape, and then when Race has reciprocated, he says firmly, “It's not your fault.”

Race huffs, his breath warm on the top of Spot’s head. “It kind of is.”

“I've been an asshole lately, I was due for getting my ass kicked anyway.”

“You're not an asshole--”

“Race.”

“You're not!” Race’s grip around Spot tightens, and Spot shifts uncomfortably as his bruised ribs scream _no thank you_. “I should've warned you, at least.”

“It's okay now.” Spot shuts his eyes and never wants to move from this position again. Race is already more relaxed because he knows Spot isn't mad at him, and Spot is the most comfortable he's been in forever. “I can think of some ways to make it up to me, if you'd like.”

There's a hint of a smile in Race’s voice at that. “I can too, but I'm not sure which of ours will be more inappropriate.”

**Author's Note:**

> also basically i'm tired of those fics where race is the damsel in distress so how about more fics where both of them can hold their own and they're a kick-ass team
> 
> i promise more than just these two will show up in the next one oops ?


End file.
